In our last installment, Iron Man was in the middle of talking down Thor when Loki made his final play. Yes, his end game was to smack Thor upside the head with a hammer. It didn’t work and he instead got a spear thrown through his neck. Now the twice-dead Valkyrie returns and hooks up with her badass boyfriend.

So that’s it, right? Me and ManiacClown can go home now? Bad guy’s dead and… oh, what’s that? Two days of wrap-up? Fine. But I swear, if we get a final page reveal of the next big threat, I’m burning this website to the ground. I’ll do it.

(from icon: a hero’s welcome. words by dwayne mcduffie, pencils by doc bright, inks by mike gustovich, colors by rachelle menashe, james sherman, and noelle giddings, letters by steve dutro. i love how the big splash page that would’ve been a “to be continued” page happens two pages before the actual “to be continued” page.)

I’ve got no revelations, no grand statements, no explorations of personal racial trauma, no words to be wasted on pointless plot twists, and no praise for meeting a low bar. Not even any rap references. Just this:

Black creators have been in comics forever, involved in successes and failures, the heights of unfettered creativity and the lows of mercenary corporate comics, racist issues and uplifting issues, and everything else in between. People like to say that “black history is American history.” Turns out that’s true of comics, too.

It’s the ThWiP 75th Week Double-Sized Spectacular! …Okay, it isn’t double-sized. It differs from week to week, so you can’t even define what single-sized is anyway. But I do have Was Taters and Space Jawa helping me out, so that’s neat.

Plus Deadpool Team-Up has the most Gavokian panel in the history of panels.

Yesterday showed the two powerhouses of the Ultimates Thor and Zarda duke it out over the streets of New York City as the 9,281st lightning bolt goes off right behind them. I’m wondering how any of these superheroes even hear each other over all the deafening thunder that must be filling the area. As the two slug it out, Iron Man appears in his special Hulkbuster armor out of nowhere. It seems enough to take Thor down and he has been trying to talk some sense into him. That brings us to this.

Thanks to ManiacClown for the help. Tomorrow the not-quite-Christmas story continues.

Ah, Day Two. The installment where Thor wrecked everyone some more and Zarda woke up and gave him a piece of her mind. It’s mentioned that Zarda really hasn’t been pulling her weight ever since joining the team at the end of Ultimate Power. But now it is Day Three, where their brawl continues and develops. How does this relate to that Clark Kent-like exit Iron Man did just a few minutes before?

Oh, Santa Thor. ManiacClown and I are going to miss writing you.

Tomorrow, Tony will continue his crusade to get through to Thor. What role will Loki play?

One thing I always kind of liked while growing up (and didn’t think twice about til I was older) was how black, or at least certain aspects of black culture, were automatically cool. Once you got past like, the Middle Passage and all that messiness in the 1800s, blackness (for whatever definition you subscribe or don’t subscribe to, and that’s the last disclaimer you get, killjoy) was cool, Jack. The Harlem Renaissance, negro spirituals, zoot suits, jazz, rock’n’roll, rap, dancing as close as you can get to a pretty lady without going to jail for public indecency… the United States would be an awful place without the cultural contributions of black folks, full of nerds insisting on listening to opera music and all types of wackness.

In comics, I can’t think of very many people with a cooler style than Khari Evans. Frank Quitely and Paul Pope have that ugly prettiness thing going on. Colleen Coover is tops as far as kid-friendliness and solid cartooning goes. Evans is the main man as far as cool goes. His people wear clothes that I could actually see someone wearing in real life. Girls change clothes. People accessorize. Hats aren’t just baseball caps. Sneakers have varied treads. Outfits are coordinated.

His faces, too. Sneers, scowls, smug grins… this guy can do it all, and he does it at maximum cool. I wish his style could do for cape comics what John Romita’s art did for Amazing Spider-Man: make it fresh and cool, with well-dressed pretty people doing interesting things.

Yesterday started up the new week with a flashback where Thor and Loki kind of stumble upon a bunch of slaughtered dead guys like it’s just another day. Thor is still going all kill-happy and our heroes have no idea what to do.

Thanks to ManiacClown, who is the master of translating 80’s pop music into Thorspeak. We’ll be back tomorrow as the heavyweight fight continues. Then it becomes a triple threat.

Doc Bright is a classic superhero artist. Not in that he’s old, but in that he draws superheroes in a way that makes them feel natural and real. His style, or at least the style of his that I’m the most familiar with, is scratchy and rough, like his people were sculpted from blocks of wood without being sanded down. It makes for pleasingly weighted superheroic action, and it’s not quite as antiseptically clean and slick as some other artists. Probably a little Neal Adams in there, too.

Bright’s had a long career. ComicboookDB says his first work ins 1978’s House of Mystery 257, an issue that also featured Arthur Suydam, David Michelinie, Otto Binder, and Michael Golden. He’s worked on Thor, Falcon, ROM, Power Man and Iron Fist, Iron Man, Action Comics, Green Lantern, and dozens more. I was going to say that I don’t think he’s done any work with Batman, but nope, he’s been there and done that several times.

His work has been few and far between lately. It seems like it’s mostly been reprint work, the odd pin-up, and Milestone Forever, but it’s easy to see that he never missed a step. He’s still as good as he ever was, though perhaps not as flashy as some of the guys nowadays. His work is always worth looking at, though, because he was always good at body language, fight choreography, and simple layouts.

Quantum & Woody, his series with Christopher Priest, had a bunch of scenes that varied from a tense nine (or more) panel grid to something more free and loose. He made the page fit the story, which is another reason why he’s such a classic artist. He knows how to make comics go.

Welcome to the final week of Ultimate Edit. Boy, it’s been some ride, eh? It’s been just over three years with fifteen issues to its name, but it’s about time to bury it. I guess we were already “burying” it, but– you know what I mean.

So to sum up. A bunch of former D-list heroes have been amped up as villains and fight the Ultimates before being forgotten about completely. Then Loki and Enchantress come to Earth with a big troll army and wrecked stuff for a bit. Enchantress magically coaxes some of the female Ultimates to help them out and capture the staple members of the team. That way, the lesser good guys could look important by rescuing the heroes worth a damn. Valkyrie breaks free from the spell and gets herself killed by Loki, but then Thor shows up and goes on a rampage. He targets everyone and Loki’s all, “Haha! All part of the plan, beyotch!”

And now, the rest of the story…

Thanks to ManiacClown who wanted Loki and Thor to discuss how Hela looks like the ladies in mommy’s lingerie scrolls. We’ll be back tomorrow with some of those other characters nobody cares about. Don’t worry, they’ll be gone by the end of the week.

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